News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1887-07-14
THE PORTER'S LITTLE GAME.
Not Content with Ordinary Robbery
He Wanted to Banko the Passen-
gers.
[From the Chicago Herald.l

| [I'rom the Chicago Herald
| "There is one sleeping-car porter in
TINS country who'llnot die poor. if thrift
and smartncss count for ANYTHING" said
gentleman who has Just returned from
a trip to California. "Soon after we
| lett Omaha the porter of our car began
to talk baseball and to let us all know
ehat he was baseball crank. He grew
tatlle[ 1Hrnlliar, too, considering his sta
Iloh' put nobody objected, for it is al
m"y9 y oGSt on a cross-country trip to keep
m on the best side of the porter. Among
| Iie passengers We're several gentlemen
| VINO take little interest i'll baseball,
| una so, along III the afternoon, when
Ghe porter told about the sport some
| passengers had had the week before, and
suggested that Jus to kill time we imi-
tate their example, the gemmen maxim
| up baseball pool at IS guess, de gem
man guessin' clostist to de way de fo'
League games comes out to take de pot, ;
there We're seven responses. After the
money had been paid into the hands of
one who was selected to act as stake
holder, and the subscribers had written
out their guesses and signed their names
to them, the porter humbly asked per-
mission to come in. Though we all
thought the chap was displaying consid-
erable freshness, SO long as he had sug-
gested the scheme, i'll which we had be-
gun to take a good deal of interest, there
was no one to object. So the porter
put up his IS and filed his guess with
the stakeholder. The next day we got
paper at Cheyenne, and you can i'm
aglne how surprised we were when we
discovered that only one man in the
party had named the four winners, and
that man the porter. The way the fell
low grinned when he put the $40 away
III his pocket made me feel suspicious,
and so, later on, when another pool of
the same sort was proposed, [ decided
to stay out and keep an eye on the por-
ter. About o'clock the train stopped
at little station, and l saw the porter
making break for the telegraph Office
When he came out he had message,
which he was reading eagerly. He sat
down in the smoking-car and scribbled
something on piece of paper, carefully
consulting his message as he done so,
and then walked back to the sleeping
car, remarking that he'd give the gem
nlen a chance to git pat of de stuff
back, and deposited with the stake
holder a tive-dollar bill and the slip of
paper I'd seen him writing on in the
smoking-car.
Having found out what his game
was, [ took the stakeholder one side and
said to him: This darl1y is bunkoing us.
It is now after 3 o'clock. In New York
and Boston it is after 5. The games
have been played. We haven't been
thinking of that, but this darky has.
He just received a message telling him
which clubs won and he has named
those clubs here, and expects to take our
money just us he did yesterday"
$50 the stakeholder and [ took out
all the guesses, changed them all to read
the same clubs that the porter had
named, and pat them back. Then We
posted the other fellows. Next day
when the returns were opened and it
was found that each guesser had named
the four winners, it was worth five times
IS apiece to us to see the expressions
which chased each other up and down
that shrewd darky's face.